The first major
retrospective exhibition ever presented of paintings by the imaginative
Italian Renaissance master Piero di Cosimo (1462–1522) will premiere at
the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from February 1 through May 3,
2015. Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence will
showcase some 44 of the artist's most compelling works. With themes
ranging from the pagan to the divine, the works include loans from
churches in Italy and one of his greatest masterpieces, Madonna and
Child Enthroned with Saints Elizabeth of Hungary, Catherine of
Alexandria, Peter, and John the Evangelist with Angels (completed by
1493), from the Museo degli Innocenti, Florence. Several important
paintings will undergo conservation treatment before the exhibition,
including the Gallery's Visitation with Saints Nicholas of Bari and Anthony Abbot (c. 1489–1490)—one of the artist's largest surviving works.Exhibition HighlightsShowcased throughout six galleries in the West Building, the
paintings on view will include altarpieces, images for private devotion,
portraits, and mythological and allegorical scenes—some produced as a
series and reunited for the exhibition.Several religious works influenced by Leonardo, such as the

Madonna and Child with Two Musician Angels (c. 1504–1507, Cini Collection),will be on view alongside Piero's fanciful mythological inventions, including the renowned

Liberation of Andromeda (c. 1510–1513, Uffizi).For many prominent families in Renaissance Florence, from the Capponi
to the Strozzi, Piero created elaborate fables and singular
mythological fantasies, the meanings of which continue to puzzle
scholars. A strange and whimsical painting,

The Discovery of Honey (c. 1500, Worcester Art Museum),will be reunited with

The Misfortunes of Silenus (c. 1500, Harvard Art Museums).

The Hunt

and The Return from the Hunt (both
c. 1485–1500, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)illustrate a struggle for
survival between man, satyrs, and wild beasts, with the distinctions
not altogether clear among them.Another of Piero's best-known spalliera panels (paintings set into the wall as wainscoting at about shoulder height, or on large pieces of furniture)—

Construction of a Palace
(c. 1514–1518, Ringling Museum of Art)—will be on view, along with
compelling portraits, including likenesses of the famed architect Giuliano da Sangallo and his father Francesco Giamberti (both c. 1482/1483, Rijksmuseum).Four paintings will be on view only in Washington:

Madonna and Child with Saints John the Baptist, Margaret, Martin, and Angels (c. 1515–1518, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa),and one intimately scaled work attributed to Piero,

Saint Veronica (c. 1510, private collection).Piero di Cosimo (1462–1522)As a pupil of Cosimo Rosselli, Piero di Cosimo began his career
around 1480. A painter of the Florentine School and a contemporary of
Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, Piero was known in his day for
his versatility as a painter of many different subjects, from the sacred
to the profane, the latter often of beguiling meaning."His fantastic inventions rivaled the verses of the ancient poets
whose myths and allegories he set out to transform in a wonderfully
strange language all his own," said Gretchen Hirschauer, associate
curator of Italian and Spanish paintings, National Gallery of Art.The first and only exhibition on Piero di Cosimo in the United States
was held in 1938 at the Schaeffer Galleries, New York, and included
seven paintings attributed to the artist.Curators and CatalogueThe curators of the exhibition in Washington are Gretchen Hirschauer,
associate curator of Italian and Spanish paintings, National Gallery of
Art; and Dennis Geronimus, associate professor of Italian Renaissance
art history, New York University; assisted by Virginia Brilliant, The
Ulla R. Searing Curator of Collections at The John and Mable Ringling
Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; and Elizabeth Walmsley, painting
conservator, National Gallery of Art. At the Uffizi, the curators
include Daniela Parenti, head of the department of medieval to
quattrocento art, Uffizi; Serena Padovani, former director, Galleria
Palatina, Palazzo Pitti; and independent scholar Elena Capretti, under
the guidance of Uffizi director Antonio Natali.

A fully illustrated scholarly catalogue in English will accompany the
exhibition in Washington. Essays and catalogue entries on each
exhibition object have been written by Brilliant, Geronimus, Hirschauer,
Padovani, and Walmsley, in addition to David Franklin, independent
scholar; Alison Luchs, curator of early European sculpture, National
Gallery of Art; Duncan Bull, curator of international paintings at the
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; and Federica Zalabra, art historian, Galleria
Nazionale dell'Umbria, Perugia. Relying on close formal, technical, and
textual analysis, the authors not only argue for specific
interpretations and cases of authorship but also address the social and
religious functions of image making in the period.

Cervantes’s Don
Quixote is considered by many to be among the greatest works of fiction ever
written. From the publication in 1605 of the first of two volumes (the second
followed ten years later, exactly 400 years ago), the novel enjoyed immense
popularity. Reprints and translations spread across Europe, with the adventures
of the knight Don Quixote and his companion, Sancho Panza, captivating the
continental imagination and influencing both the performing and visual arts.

Coypel’s Don Quixote Tapestries:
Illustrating a Spanish Novel in Eighteenth-Century France is devoted to a series of tapestries
by Charles Coypel (1694−1752), painter to Louis XV, which illustrates
twenty-eight of the novel’s most celebrated episodes and woven at the Gobelins
Manufactory in Paris.

The exhibition
includes three Gobelins tapestry panels from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los
Angeles and two Flemish tapestries inspired by Coypel from The Frick Collection,
which have not been on view in more than ten years.

These are joined by
five of Coypel’s original paintings (never before seen in New York), called
cartoons (from the Italian cartone), that were used as full-scale preparatory
designs for the tapestries, on loan from the Palais Impérial de Compiègne and
the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris.

The series is
completed by eighteen prints and books from the Hispanic Society of America,
New York.

An accompanying
catalogue explores Coypel’s role in illustrating Don Quixoteand the
circumstances that made his designsthe most renowned pictorial interpretations
of the novel.

A rich program of
lectures, seminars, and salon evenings explores the history of the novel and
its 2influence on print, tapestry, film,
ballet, and opera from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

The exhibition is
organized by Charlotte Vignon, Curator of Decorative Arts, The Frick
Collection, and is made possible by The Florence Gould Foundation with
additional support from the Grand Marnier Foundation.

CHARLES COYPEL ROYAL
PAINTER TO LOUIS XV

Charles Coypel was
born into a family of distinguished French painters. Both his grandfather, Noël
Coypel (1628−1707), and his father, Antoine Coypel (1661−1722), were directors
of the prestigious Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and, on several occasions,
also produced paintings to be reproduced as tapestries at the Gobelins
Manufactory. In 1715, Antoine was appointed First Painter to the King, a title
Charles would inherit in 1747.

In 1714, the young
Charles Coypel was asked to collaborate with the Gobelins Manufactory in what
would become one of its most celebrated series of tapestries: The Story of Don
Quixote. Between 1714 and 1734, he delivered twenty-seven paintings, and a last
one in 1751, just before his death.

Coypel is believed to
have selected the scenes and also determined the order in which he would paint
them. Eight cartoons illustrate episodes from the first part of the novel—in
which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza embark on foolish, often comical
adventures—while the remaining twenty paintings illustrate scenes from the
second part, in which the two protagonists evolve from buffoons to heroes.

For the selection of
scenes and compositions, Coypel was influenced by contemporary French theater.
By the early eighteenth century, numerous plays, ballets, and operas had retold
and interpreted the adventures of Don Quixote for both the court and the
popular audience. Coypel himself was a playwright, whose first two plays were
inspired by Cervantes’s novel. Though not a success, Don Quichotte—written when
Coypelwas only eighteen—demonstrates his familiarity with the tale. In 1720,
when Coypel was painting the cartoons for the Gobelins, he wrote a second
interpretation. Titled Les Folies de Cardenio, it was performed five times
before the court, with the young Louis XV participating in the ballet. For the
tapestry designs, Coypel created images of Don Quixote that would be familiar
to theatrical audiences. His characters use gestures and postures seen on
stage, and on several occasions, Coypel included a theater-like curtain.

THE STORY OF DON
QUIXOTE AT THE GOBELINS ROYAL MANUFACTORY

Founded in 1663, the
Gobelins Royal Manufactory produced sumptuous furnishings for the French king’s
residences and lavish diplomatic gifts that spread his glory to foreign courts.

Woven nine times
between 1717 and 1794, The Story of Don Quixoteis one of the Gobelins’s most
celebrated tapestry series. The number of panels and the selection of Coypel’s
scenes varied with each weaving. The first weaving (1717−19), for example,
included the first fifteen scenes painted by Coypel while the eight weaving
(1763−87) had sixty-seven panels, including three that are in the exhibition.

At least six panels
of the fifth weaving were hung in the 1750s in Louis XV’s apartments in the
Château de Marly. Others were presented as diplomatic gifts—like the three
Getty panels in the exhibition—or purchased by distinguished clients. A total
of about two hundred panels from The Story of Don Quixote were woven during the
eighteenth century. Each panel presents a central scene by Coypel framed by a
trompe-l’oeil carved and gilded wooden frame that appears to be hung on a wall
covered in yellow or red fabric. The scenes are surrounded by a decorative
border of flowers, animals, and other motifs related to the adventures of Don
Quixote. This border, known as an alentour, was originally designed by
Jean-Baptiste Belin de Fontenay père (1653−1717) and Claude Audran III
(1658−1734).

Unlike Coypel’s
scenes, which remained unchanged throughout the eighteenth century, the
alentour was modified on six occasions to adapt to new tastes and fashions. All
the versions, however, retain the initial idea of creating a highly decorative
border that could be shortened in length, as this allowed the tapestries to be
slightly adjustable in size, according to the taste or need of the owner.

Tapestries consist of
warps—fixed threads, usually of undyed wool—and colored wefts that are
interwoven with the base warp to create the image. The Don Quixote tapestries
were woven on high-warp looms, with the exception of the seventh weaving, which
was produced on low-warp looms. On high-warp looms, the warp threads were
stretched vertically. In order to weave an exact reproduction of the painted
scene, the cartoon was hung on a wall behind the weaver, who looked at the
reflection in a mirror placed on the wall in front of him. Only a few cartoons
have survived today, and most are in poor condition. Coypel’s Don Quixote scenes
are no exception. Because of their enduring success, the paintings needed to be
restored several times during the eighteenth century. Coypel’s hand is no
longer visible on the cartoons used for multiple weavings, but those woven only
once or twice—such as the examples presented in the exhibition—show most of
their original surface.

THE ENDURING SUCCESS
OF CHARLES COYPEL’S STORY OF DON QUIXOTE“

I’ll wager that
before long there won’t be a tavern, an inn, a hostelry, or a barbershop where
the history of our deeds isn’t painted.”

Uttered by Sancho Panza,
these boastful words would prove prophetic. Charles Coypel’s paintings gained
wide exposure and additional fame from a series of twenty-five black-and-white
engravings made between 1723 and 1734 under his personal direction.(Fourteen
are included in the exhibition.)

Printmakers worked
from preparatory drawings made by Coypel after his own paintings, which
explains the inscription Coypel invenit, (designed by Coypel) rather than Coypel
pinxit (painted by Coypel) at the lower left of each plate. Accessible to only
a few wealthy patrons, the tapestries remained luxury items throughout the
centuries while the engravings were affordable to a larger public. Thousands of
sheets were printed and sold individually or in folios. Reproduced and reduced
in size, the prints also illustrated other editions of Cervantes’s novel, not
only in French but in English and Dutch as well. In 1746, the engravings after
Coypel even became a substitute for Cervantes’s words in the lavish book of the
Dutch publisher Pieter de Hondt, who cut part of the novel to accommodate the
large plates. Four of these early editions are on view.

With this series of
engravings, Coypel became the most influential eighteenth-century illustrator
of Cervantes’s novel. Throughout the eighteenth century, Coypel’s designs
continued to influence tapestry production in France and abroad. Around
1730−45, the Brussels workshop of Peter van den Hecke produced a series of
eight tapestries illustrating Don Quixote, with six of them inspired by
engravings after Coypel, two of which belong to The Frick Collection.

Visually different
from the Gobelins Don Quixote tapestries, the scenes cover the entire surface
of the tapestry panel and are surrounded by a simple border that simulates a
carved and gilded frame. The designer of the cartoons, Philippe de Hondt,
created the new compositions by adapting, or combining, elements from
engravings after Coypel. Working within a Flemish tradition, de Hondt
transposed Coypel’s figures to a village scene recalling pictures by David
Teniers the Younger rather than setting his figures on an eighteenth-century
French stage. Appreciated abroad, seven Van den Hecke panels, including the two
Frick tapestries, were acquired by the French court in 1748, when the same
court was sponsoring the production of the Gobelins Don Quixote tapestries. A
year later, the Flemish tapestries were displayed at the Château de Compiègne
in the study of Louis, Dauphin of France, son of Louis XV.With these two
Flemish tapestries, the exhibition brings Coypel’s designs full circle—from the
original cartoons to the woven Gobelins tapestries to reproductions in prints
and books and later tapestries from the workshop of Peter van den Hecke.

PUBLICATION

The exhibition is
accompanied by an illustrated catalogue written by Charlotte Vignon, the
Frick’s Curator of Decorative Arts, with a forward by
acclaimed literary translator Edith Grossman. Images

On 3February 2015, Sotheby’s London will present masterworks of Surrealist Art in a dedicated Evening sale which
will stand alongside the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale.The market
for Surrealist Art has continued to grow from strength to strength in recent
years, with new benchmarks set in the field at Sotheby’s each season, including
the highest price at auction for any work by Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, René Magritte and Francis Picabia.
James Mackie, Sotheby’s
Senior Director, Impressionist & Modern Art, said: “This year’s
dedicated Surrealist sale offers an extremely rich and broad range of works by
the key names of the Surrealist art movement. The outstanding works, many of
which are fresh to the market having remained in private collections for
decades, have each been selected to represent the artists at their best.”

René
Magritte L’explication
oil on canvas 80 by 60cm,
31 1/2 by 23 5/8in. Painted in 1952 Estimate: £4 - 6 million
Important highlights of
the forthcoming February sale include René Magritte’s L’explication, which comes to the market from a
private collection for the first time in 35 years, Yves Tanguy’s extremely fine
painting Deux
fois du noir, and the
finest group of Picabia's celebrated ‘Transparence’ paintings ever to come to
the market. Painted in 1952, Magritte’s L’explication is among his most compelling in engagements with the Surrealist interrogation and transformation of the object.
The foreground of the composition is dominated by a striking amalgamation of
bottle and carrot that sits on a solid wooden table surrounded by examples of
its constituent parts, through which Magritte explores the idea that the
combination of two related objects could create a poetic dynamic just as
intense as the combination of two completely incongruous objects.

Yves
Tanguy Deux
fois du noir
Oil on canvas
53.5 by 74cm, 21 by 291⁄8in. ainted in 1941
Estimate: £2 - 3 million Deux
fois du noir exemplifies
the refined and personal language with which Tanguy transformed the boundaries
of Modernist painting. Tanguy was invited by André Breton to become a member
of the Surrealist group in 1925 and two years laterhe was a highly accomplished painter in
complete command of a new and personal Surrealist language. Tanguy's pictorial
forms are unique in the canon of Surrealist art, amorphous yet somehow
recognisable to the viewer. With a great sense of mystery, Tanguy presents inDeux fois du noir
a brilliant
hyper-reality that embodies the aims of the Surrealist movement.

Paul
Delvaux Le Train
Bleu or La Rue Aux
Tramways Oil on board
122 by 244cm; 48 by 96in. Painted in November 1946 Est. £2.5 - 3.5 million
Painted in November 1946,
Paul Delvaux’s monumental work Le
train bleu,
alternatively known as La
rue aux tramways, is one of
the most important and remarkable paintings from the peak of his career.
Although the artist was acquainted with the leading figures of the Surrealist
group, including André Breton and Paul Eluard, his form of Surrealism remained
unique. Capturing the modernity of the urban landscape juxtaposed with the
sensuality of the nude form, this monumental work is an exceptional example of
the paintings he was producing at this critical time in his oeuvre.

Óscar
Domínguez Toro y Torero
(Composition au Taureau)
oil on canvas 106.8 by
77.5cm, 42 by 30 1/2in. Painted circa 1934-35 Estimate: £1.3-2 million Toro y
Torero is one of
Óscar Domínguez’s most important compositions from the peak of the artist’s career, and works of such calibre rarely come to the market. Domínguez’s works from this period shares its magical, dreamlike aesthetic with other Surrealist painters such as Ernst and Dalí, but as with many of his Spanish compatriots, the subject of his production retained a strong nationalistic streak. Toro y Torero is an especially important work in the artist’s œuvre
because of its
references to Spanish culture, religion and corrida
(central to many
Iberian artists’ depiction of conflict). The first owner
of Toro
y Torero was the
leader of the Surrealist group André Breton who possessed an outstanding collection of important works by avant-garde artists of the post-war period. Much of Breton’s collection has found its way
into museums across the world, including the Musée National d’Art Moderne in
Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The present work remained in in
his family until 2003, when his collection was sold at auction in Paris.

Francis
Picabia Lunaris
Oil, brush and ink and
black crayon on panel 120 by 94.5cm; 471⁄4 by 371⁄4in.
Painted circa 1929
Est. £800,000 – 1.2 million
Painted circa 1929, Lunaris is an exceptional example of
Picabia's celebrated ‘Transparence’ paintings that Picabia executed in the late
1920s and early 1930s. This series of works, which was a marked departure from
the artist’s Dadist experiments of the previous decades, derived its name from
the multiple layers of overlapping imagery that Picabia employed and is
characterised by figurative images underpinned by a Classical beauty. The first
owner of the present work was the influential French art dealer Léonce Rosenberg (1879-1947) who greatly admired
Picabia’s work and commissioned several paintings for his home.
As the Museum of Modern
Art, New York announced a major Picabia retrospective, scheduled for November
2016, the sale will present two other ‘Transparence’ paintings, includingLunis, also from circa 1929, (est. £800,000- 1,200,000)

René
Magritte Les
belles réalités
Gouache on paper 34.5 by
26cm.; 131⁄2 by 101⁄4in Executed in 1962 Est. £700,000-1,000,000
Executed in 1962,Les belles
réalités will now
be offered at auction for the very first time. A witty and compelling example of
Magritte’s preoccupation with the unexpected juxtaposition of objects, the
painting features the most iconic element to appear in his work - that of the
apple. Both the apple and table are closely associated with the tradition of
still life painting, which make them the ideal subjects for a Surrealist work.
The present work is remarkable for its bright tones and intricate brushwork
which reveals the brilliant talent of the painter and the importance of gouache
in his oeuvre.

Salvador
Dali Cinq
personnages surréalistes: femmes à tête de fleurs, femme à tiroirs
(évocation du jugement de paris)
Gouache, brush and
ink on pink paper
48.9 by 63.8cm; 191⁄4 by 251⁄8in.
Executed in 1937
Est. £400,000 - 600,000
Executed in 1937 as a
present for the renowned fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, this exquisite drawing
exemplifies the blend of hyperrealism and surreal metamorphosis that was a
hallmark of Dalí’s mature style. The work also brilliantly combines some of
the artist’s most iconic transformations of the female figure. Dalí
and Schiaparelli met in the 1930s and subsequently collaborated on a number of
projects. The fashion designer owned a number of works by the artist, including
both the present work – for which she apparently specified the use of pink
paper – and the earlier oil Printemps nécrophilique.